With Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations to look forward to this week, here's one Ganesha that would be better off on land, than at sea. Reason? A 638 carat Zambian emerald sits in the palm of the elephant god
With Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations to look forward to this week, here's one Ganesha that would be better off on land, than at sea. Reason? A 638 carat Zambian emerald sits in the palm of the elephant god
What makes Ganesha happy? A rotund belly, an upturned trunk, a plate of modak placed before him and a mouse at his feet, right? Arzan Khambatta's rendering of the elephant god of the Hindu pantheon -- an extremely rotund wooden sculpture weighing 75 kg -- has none of those accompaniments, but the look on the statue's face is blissful. And while that may say a lot about the skill of the 45 year-old Dadar-based artist, we'd like to believe that a 638 carat green emerald that the idol is holding has a role to play as well.
The 3.5 ft tall Ganesha measures 2.5 ft by 2 ft at the base and weighs
75 kg. Sculptor Arzan Khambatta (top right) seen at his studio, has
added filigree work made of stainless steel as ornamentation on the
wooden statue, to complement the 638 carat Zambian emerald placed on
Ganesha's palmu00a0
Created over three months, Khambatta's Emerald Avighna, as the statue is called, is part of a UK-based gem mining company's initiative to raise awareness and money for Asian elephants. Gemfields invited seven international artists and designers to incorporate the company's emeralds in their elephant designs as part of elephant man Mark Shand's Elephant Parade that was held in London last year. All the installations in the open-air art exhibition of decorated elephants were showcased in London for a month.
This year, the second iteration of the Emeralds for Elephants project comes to India. This time round, Gemfields has worked with 10 Indian jewellery companies to create pieces of jewellery, inspired by elephants and nature. Khambatta's Ganesha occupies pride of place, not least because of the emerald that has been sourced from the company's mines in Zambia.
The 128g emerald, informs Rupak Sen,u00a0 Gemfields marketing director, Asia and the Middle East, was part of a 2,000 carat rough stone mined in late 2009. In gems, unlike precious metals, carat refers to the weight, where one carat is roughly 0.2g.
The purity of a gemstone, Sen explains, is judged on the basis of its colour, cut and clarity. The better the cut that traps the light inside the gemstone ("giving it a sparkle," says Sen), the better the clarity ("most emeralds come with a 'flaw' like a spot or a scratch, or what we call, 'nature's garden'," he adds) and the higher the carat, the purer the gemstone. Colour doesn't determine the purity of an emerald the way it does for a diamond, Sen points out, as it is a question of subjective preference.
The emerald being held lovingly by Ganesha, was cut especially for the Emeralds for Elephants project, since such heavy emeralds are seldom used in jewellery. Last year, Sen informs us with pride, a 680 carat emerald was employed in one of the sculptures displayed in London.
For Khambatta, working with a brittle gemstone like emerald after nearly three decades of sculpting scrap metal, wood and other coarse material at his 2,000 sq ft industrial studio in Sewri, was an exercise in patience.
"I made a wooden template of the gem and worked on my statue with that. I was afraid the gemstone would fall on the hot floor, and emeralds are known to be brittle," says Khambatta.
But the emerald, the artist admits, was the starting point of his sculpture. "I decided the size of my Ganesha after seeing the emerald. Let's just say, if the emerald was half the size, the Ganesha would have been halved too," Khambatta points out. The artist, who is trained as an architect, made six sketches, which included a reclining Ganesha, and one resting his back against a tree. In the end, the one with Ganesha holding the gemstone in his hand was fixed upon.
"The figure of Ganesha holds tremendous symbolism, of knowledge, power, and happiness. It made sense for me to choose to use the emerald on the king of the elephants," says Khambatta. The sculpture, along with the other jewellery pieces will be displayed in seven cities, including New Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad till October 10. It will be displayed from September 8 to 10 in Mumbai, during the last few days of the visarjan. On October 14, it will return to Mumbai, where it will be auctioned along with the other works from this collection at the Taj Mahal Palace & Towers at Apollo Bunder, Colaba.
"We hope to raise at least a million dollars through this auction," says Sen. The reserve price (minimum price) of the Ganesha idol has been fixed at Rs 50 lakh. You can catch the Ganesha and the collection at Anmol Jewellers, Bandra (W) from September 8 to 10.
Call: 26400769
The Elephant Parade will visit Singapore for two months, starting November 11. Visit elephantparade.com for more
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